Speak Out June 2017

Association news

Crunching the numbers How does the Federal Budget 2017-2018 effect speech pathologists?

SPEECH PATHOLOGY AUSTRALIA Chief Executive Officer Gail Mulcair and Ronelle Hutchinson, Manager, Policy and Advocacy recently attended the “budget lock up” in Canberra and listened to the Minister for Health outline the key measures in the health and ageing federal budget. Medicare freeze There is some movement on lifting the Medicare freeze for our private practitioners. But speech pathologists will need to wait until July 2019 for the indexation of allied health MBS items. It is a good sign, however, that the government is willing to reboot its relationship with doctors and other health practitioners. The government has also scrapped the proposed changes to the Medicare Safety Net (proposed in 2014 but never agreed to by the Senate), which will benefit clients with chronic conditions who have high health costs. Reforms to primary health care It seems that the very public stoush between the medical doctors of Australia and the federal government might be coming to an end (this is a very significant achievement for the current Minister for Health). Formal partnership agreements have been established with key doctor and pharmaceutical groups. This means the government can now turn its attention to some of its key reforms in primary care including the roll out of the health care homes trials (only $0.2million in the budget for this trial, as there has been some accounting completed; and MBS “dollars” for patients enrolled, will be redirected to the trial funding model). Very few speech pathologists are employed directly by general practices but are critical to multidisciplinary care for many people with chronic conditions. The Association will be watching carefully and identifying any threats (and opportunities) to increasing access to speech pathology care for patients involved in the trials. The government has now committed to a national roll out of the “opt out” electronic My Health Record (with $374 million in the budget to support this). The My Health Record has significant limitations in that speech pathologists still don’t have full read and write access to the record for their patients but the Association will continue to advocate that this be corrected in the roll out. There is a big commitment to a new Medicare and aged care payment processing system (to the tune of $67.3 million in 2017– 2018). Rest assured the Association has already been involved in discussions with government about the design of the new system. NDIS It is very reassuring to see a strong commitment to funding the NDIS. Almost everyone in Australia will be contributing however, and expect to see a little less in your pay check from July 2019 with an increase of 0.5 per cent in the Medicare surcharge (from 2 to 2.5 per cent of your taxable income). The Association will continue to advocate strongly, loudly and persistently that dramatic improvements are needed if NDIS participants are to continue accessing speech pathology services through the scheme.

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June 2017 www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

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